The ScienceDirect interface provides access to the electronic content owned by Elsevier and third-party information providers like Cell Press. Max Planck researchers have full text access to nearly the entire journal collection with archival content, including Cell Press and The Lancet journals. In addition, the Max Planck Society covers Open Access fees for Max Planck authors in more than 2500 journals. Further details are available on the MPDL website. The MPG subscription also covers a collection of 680 Elsevier eBooks acquired in 2015. Moreover, selected eBook backfiles have been purchased within the scope of the German national licenses program.

JSTOR provides access to more than 12 million academic journal articles, books, and primary sources in 75 disciplines. Users from the Max Planck Society have access to selected archival collections of scholarly journals and more than 3,000 Open Access ebooks. The book selection is continuously extended by single e-book acquisitions by MPG libraries. For the archival collections, JSTOR's agreements with publishers include an updating provision referred to as a "moving wall". The moving wall is a fixed period of time ranging, in most cases, from two to five years, that defines the gap between the most recently published issue and the date of the most recent issues available in JSTOR.

The Max Planck e-Book Index provides holdings of electronic books licensed for users in the Max Planck Society.

The international and interdisciplinary text collection about contemporary and classical theories of society and the social principle compiles writings by Max Weber, Karl Marx, Jürgen Habermas, Robert Merton, George Herbert Mead, Auguste Comte, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, Saul Howard Becker, Herbert Spencer, Antonio Gramsci, Alexis de Tocqueville, Harriet Martineau, Talcott Parsons, Émile Durkheim, Georg Simmel, Simone de Beauvoir, Pierre Bourdieu, Theodor W. Adorno, etc. Texts frequently appear in their original versions as well as in English translation.

The SpringerLink platform provides MPG staff with access to a huge collection of English and German eBooks from 2005 onwards, as well as the English and the German collection of the Springer Book Archive (1842-2004). In addition, the content of selected book series is available. Includes major reference works and dictionaries. Max Planck researchers who publish a monograph or edited volume with Springer Nature as an Open Access eBook receive a discount on the standard Book Publishing Charge. MPDL covers the costs remaining on a pro rata basis. Further details are available on the MPDL website.

wiso is an online database specially tailored to the needs of users from academic and research institutions by GBI-Genios. It aggregates mainly German content from various publishers, covering economics, social sciences, psychology and technology. wiso provides access to major reference databases, to full texts of selected journals, e-books, magazines and newspapers like VDI Nachrichten or Handelsblatt as well as to company information and market data.

The World Bank eLibrary comprises all eBooks of the World Bank published by its researchers. The publications particularly deal with the socio-economic development in less developed countries and regions, and comprise research results in the fields of development policy, economic policy, foreign trade, health, education, development aid, and poverty. Additionally, access to two eJournals is enabled via the archive, as well as access to 7,400 working papers offered by the World Bank in open access mode.